Learning to Celebrate Love

Bringing a circle of support around two people is beautiful. My favorite weddings combine celebration, tradition, and personality, with the rituals chosen on purpose, a specific and unique start to their new adventure together.

Last year we went to the wedding of my dear friend, Christine. The small congregation of close friends and family spontaneously sang her down the aisle of the small chapel. The scene was gorgeous on a beautiful island off of Seattle. It propelled me to live like we have 100 Junes.

Also last year, my youngest brother got married at the top of a mountain in Colorado. It’s where he, his wife, and their clan feel their center, find their place in the world.

A few years ago, I had the honor to read to the grooms at my uncle Kerry’s wedding.

Sidebar: My Uncle Kerry is roughly two months older than me. We met in our early teen years when his sister married my dad. We hit it off immediately, to become forever good friends. Since the situation was, especially at the time, kind of ridiculous that he was my uncle, the title sticks whenever I speak of him. Now he is “Uncle Kerry” not only to me but also my friends and my husband, who is, in fact, older than him. We were a modern family before being a modern family was cool.

Anyway, in preparing a personal reading for his wedding, two main themes came rushing into my mind. The first was, we have to learn to love.

I love this pic of Dan, Marcus, and Kerry!

Love is Taught

The beautiful song, “You’ve got to be carefully taught” from South Pacific, speaks of how children are taught to hate, how parents, teachers, and the community teach them at a young age to stay away from, scorn, and fear those who may look different, believe different, are not the way…

“You’ve got to be taught to be afraid of people’s eyes who are oddly made.

And people’s whose skin is a different shade.

You’ve got to be carefully taught.”

This version by Mandy Patinkin is particularly moving…

I was thinking, That’s true. Children are taught to fear, to stay away, and to hate. But what about love? Are people born knowing how to love? No, I don’t think so. We also have to be taught to love. And like anything we learn, we have to both be open to learning and also – and I think this is very important – we have to practice to get good and then get better. This is why we, communally, must keep trying to show, to exemplify, to teach – Love.

There were some people close to the couple who missed the wedding, for a variety of reasons, both practical and personal. Kerry’s mother did not miss the wedding, though there was deep fear (from me, I’m not speaking for anyone else) that she may not choose to celebrate. On the surface, there are those who felt Kerry’s wedding was “against” what her strong Southern Baptist beliefs and upbringing taught. Unless, of course, the underlying belief is in a loving God and an all-knowing God who created each person with a promise of being wonderfully made. Then, it may be believed, that God leaves it to mankind to decide: Does creation begin with love? or hate? and what is left to us, the humans to teach?

I’m getting off track. The point is, love is learned. I wish everyone close to Kerry and Dan could have been at their wedding, it was a celebration of love and faith, and anyone open could have learned more about love that day.

Back to creating the words, my second thought was, like anything worth having, relationships take work.

Love is Work

And then I wondered, why does the concept of work, in love especially, get such a bad rap? So much of work can, and should be, a passion. A joy even.

Good work celebrates both team and individuality, has a purpose, provides challenges, includes wins and sometimes is hard. Hard work gives unique rewards that only hard work can.

Then there’s artwork. People who create art…it’s not easy. Art both comes from and requires struggle, mistakes, thrashing about and feeling a failure – sometimes when creating, an artist has to break the art, and sometimes creating art breaks the artist. It is anything but easy. And yet, in the end, creating art rewards both the artist and the audience with…more. More than all of this.

Love, Friends, is the most rewarding hard-art-work of all.

I’m still a little weepy thinking of this particular celebration. I adore my dear Kerry. I have worried for him, as I do. I am consistently a gold-medal worrier for those I love.

The world is not yet the accepting planet I wish for him and his husband, but it inches, and they find circles of safety and tables of laughter. I wish I could put them in a bubble and keep them warm, joyful, and safe. Of course, I can’t. I can’t for any of us. Still, they adventure more than anyone I know. They are brave and full of living, and in this, I hope the world pays attention and learns a bit more about love.

Now you know the backstory of this poem(ish) I read at their wedding. It was a joy and an honor.

A life of love is a work of art

Often beginning from a spark, a muse, perhaps a lightening start

From there evolves the practice and discipline to grow together

Then to push the edges, to find no end, to uncover the hidden heart

A marriage, built upon practicing love, evokes hope and also teaches

Proof of what humanity can be, the depth of the human heart’s reaches

A marriage such as this is the highest art of all, in fact – a masterpiece

5 Comments

The idea that love must be taught is interesting. You do bring up some good points. I often like to believe that love is more of an innate, human, instinct. I think if children were raised with no hate, if nobody taught them to hate or showed them examples of hate, they would innately love everybody. The tricky part though is not showing them any hate. It’s easier said then done. Another aspect though is maybe we do need to teach people how to SHOW love. Even if the actual feeling is innate, people might not know how to show it without being taught. Hmm.

Anyway, the other point you make about relationships taking work is absolutely true! And I think you’ve put it very elegantly! Your Uncle Kerry and his husband seem like great people and i’m sure the wedding was a wonderful celebration of love!

What a beautiful poem! Love is truly a thing to celebrate. I think love as a feeling is innate, and I think it can be easy, depending on the people involved. I completely agree that love as an action must be learned (and thus we need to teach it), and love as an action takes work. I can feel love for my husband all day long, but what if I do nothing to express it to him? Then he can’t feel my love for him.